Wednesday, 7 February 2024

JC Donath Reserve, Reservoir

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (19:03): (502) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Community Sport, who has just left the chamber, and the action I seek is for the minister to join me in visiting the Keon Park Football Club pavilion at JC Donath Reserve. As the minister will know, JC Donath Reserve is a large expanse of sporting fields in northern Reservoir. It is home to a lot of clubs, including the Donath Cricket Club, the Keon Park Cricket Club, the Keon Park Stars, Reservoir United, the Keon Park Tennis Club and the Keon Park Football Club, and I want to acknowledge all the amazing volunteers who keep those clubs ticking over, including Terry Brooks, Nami Yilmaz, Patrick Wood, Jacqui Mackertich and many others. At the moment the Nepalese Association of Victoria are playing their annual NAV cricket cup at the grounds, and I know a number of the teams competing are from the member for Narre Warren South’s part of the world. Well done to Alok Paudel and Raju Adhikari and all those who organised the event, and good luck to the teams in that tournament.

Unfortunately a lot of the facilities at JC Donath Reserve are showing their age, especially the pavilions. They are Darebin council facilities, but as the minister knows, the state Labor government made a commitment at the last election to help upgrade the Keon Park Football Club pavilion and specifically to build female-friendly change rooms there. Of course this announcement is part of this government’s ongoing important work to support our female and gender-diverse athletes, a very important body of work that has seen 235 projects now completed at an overall value of over $250 million.

But we would love the minister to come out and just have a bit of a chat about the timing of that funding for the Keon Park Football Club’s pavilion. There has been a suggestion that Darebin council might contribute some further money to allow for a bigger upgrade. That would be great, but it might have the effect of substantially delaying the time before the club gets to see some upgraded facilities. We are hoping to chat to the minister about maybe a two-stage or modular approach to the project that will ensure that first tranche of funding gets on the ground faster. We were up there the other day talking to Jess Halabi from the club and a number of the senior women players, to their hardworking club secretary Theo Tsouras and to Ged Kearney, our local federal member. I think everyone was in agreement that we would like, if possible, to do something – certainly sooner rather than later – for the club’s women athletes.

We thank the minister for her consideration of this matter, and we thank her more broadly for her ongoing work supporting community sport and supporting women in sport.